Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

RSS?

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated pages, such as blogs or news feeds. Consumers of RSS content use special browsers called aggregators to watch for new content in dozens or even hundreds of web feeds.

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This technology allows you to control what information you divulge to subscribe to source. And, you are totally in control of your subscription. You don’t have to beg to get a flow going and grovel to get off of it.

One interesting use of the RSS phenomina is you now have a unique way of retaining control of your email inbox. Rather than sign up for an email flow from a website, thus putting some strange webmaster in posession of your email address and all that implies, you can get the feed and keep your privacy and control.

For example, before you automatically signup of a website’s email offering, check Feedburner for an offering of the site. If no luck, look to see if the site offers a feed. If you find the websites feed or you can efine it to feedburner, then use Feedblitz to subscibe to that feed. The two step process puts you, not that strange webmmaster, in control of your email. Tire of the feed and you can turn it off. No begging, pleading, or “process”. Also, no chance for your email to be sold to spammers.

They may find your email by other means, but it can’t be sold or “blundered” away.